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Updated: June 7, 2025
On June 18, 1821, came the first performance of Weber's masterpiece, "Der Freischütz." The theater was beseiged for hours by eager crowds, and when the doors were at last opened, there was a grand rush to enter. The whole house from pit to galleries was soon filled, and when the composer entered the orchestra, there was a roar of applause, which it seemed would never end.
The work of arrangement was entrusted to Herr G. Mahler, and under his auspices 'Die drei Pintos' was actually produced, though with little success. At the present time the only opera of Weber which can truthfully be said to belong to the current repertory is 'Der Freischütz, and even this is rarely performed out of Germany.
They stood there on their little patch of sanctified territory like the gamekeeper of Der Freischutz in the charmed circle; within were prayer and fasting, unmelodious psalmody and solemn hewing of heretics, "before the Lord in Gilgal;" without were "dogs and sorcerers, red children of perdition, Powah wizards," and "the foul fiend."
When Tita and I went upstairs at night the small and gentle creature was grievously perplexed. "I cannot make it out," she said. "He is quite changed. What is the matter with him?" "You behold, madam, in that young man the moral effects of vulpicide. A demon has entered into him. You remember, in 'Der Freischutz, how " "Did you say vulpicide?" she asks, with a sweet smile.
Mary heard a chorus from "Der Freischutz," beginning just as she was dragging her companion over a stile, which had been formidable enough by day, but was ten times worse in the confusing shadows.
"You are playing from the Freischutz, aren't you?" she asked. "No," said Theodore, politely, "I'm playing Gounod's Faust." "Your brother looks frightfully respectable," said the little dark one, whose name was Rieke; "he's different to you, you old villain." "Oh! well, he's going into the Church," whispered the lieutenant.
The music now passes to the supernatural, and we have Puck's invocation to the spirits, whom he summons to raise a storm and sink the vessel in which the lovers have embarked. Puck's recitative is very powerful, and the chorus of the spirits in response, a very rapid presto movement, is in its way as effective as the incantation music in "Der Freischütz."
Perhaps he was even a little theatrical in his fancies, and remembered the crashes of sheet-iron thunder and the blinding blaze of the gunpowder lightning, that always accompanied the shot-cylinder rain when Macbeth was seeking the weird sisters for the second time when the fearful incantations of "Der Freischutz" were about to be commenced or when the ever-ready demon was invoked by Faust, the first printer-devil.
Nearly all the officers of the Varag, some thirty in number, spoke English; the ship itself was luxuriously fitted up; a fine military band welcomed us with "Hail, Columbia!" when we came on board, and played selections from Martha, Traviata, and Der Freischütz while we dined, and all things contributed to make our visit to the Varag a bright spot in our Siberian experience.
I, too, should read them over again for the first time, those wonderful romances; yes, and I should write my own early books over again oh, the divine joy of early creation! and I should set out again with bounding pulses on my Harzreise: and the first night of Freischütz would come once more, and I should be whistling the Jungfern and sipping punch in the Casino, with Lottchen filling up my glass."
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